Nudges in "Equilibrium"

"Nudges" have increasingly shown to be cost-effective tools for promoting a wide range of behaviors, from medication adherence to saving to energy efficiency. But most research evaluates one intervention in isolation on target outcomes. As such, we have little understanding of how campaigns might interact with one another, or whether they generate spillovers in unanticipated domains. In particular, existing literature suggests that there are general mechanisms that might cause programs to interfere with one another: people might infer benefits to actions based on whether or not they get promoted, or they might find it difficult to change several behaviors at once, or they might be unable to pay attention to all the information generated by campaigns. This project proposes an experiment in which individuals randomly receive reminders or incentives to engage in one healthy behavior, two healthy behaviors, or nothing at all. By comparing success rates across treatments, the study will uncover whether these general mechanisms do indeed cause interference between programs, and if so, which mechanisms are most important. Any evidence of spillovers or interactions would imply that we can make our campaigns even more effective by coordinating them.